D. H. BRUNS

 

D. H. Bruns, dealer in groceries, provisions and hardware, corner of University and San Pablo avenues, West  Berkeley, was born in Hanover, Germany, April  9, 1834, the second of four brothers, three of whom are in business in San Francisco.  His parents were Albert and Adalia Bruns, both natives of Germany.  Our subject came to America and located in the city of San Francisco in 1861, and engaged in clerking for one of the brothers for eighteen months.  Being of a rambling disposition, he left his situation and went to Calaveras county and engaged in mining pursuits for a time; next he was in Idaho for a few months, and then located at the Cascades, Oregon, for one winter.  Not meeting with success, he next visited Crockett, and was forced to leave those diggings in consequence of Indian troubles.  Later, in company with other prospectors, he located claims at the Santa Ana mines, where they began tunneling in quartz and prospecting.  To use the miner’s term, they were “frozen out” in this enterprise by assessments.  His next mining experience was at Scott valley, California, where he spent one year, meeting with ill success.  He became thoroughly disgusted with mining and concluded to try some other method of accumulating his fortune.  He dropped pick and shovel and returned to San Francisco in 1865, and opened the grocery business on the corner of Folsom and Spear streets.  Here he enjoyed prosperity and conducted the business some thirteen years, when he removed to his present place of trade, where he has been very successful and has accumulated considerable business property in the neighborhood of his own stand.  The later is a large, two-story frame building, 100 x 120 feet, in which may be found a large and well-assorted stock of general merchandise, consisting of everything that should be found in a general merchandise store.

 

He affiliates with the A. O. U. W. and  K. of  H., both lodges of West Berkeley. 

 

Mr. Bruns was married in San Francisco in September, 1870 to Miss Mary Bormann, a native of Germany, and they have nine children living and two deceased.  His parents are also deceased, the father dying in 1864, and the mother in 1889.